|
|
In keeping with the OLPC's principle of charity not beginning at home - despite the state of education in American schools being a major cause of alarm - Amazon's Kindle e-reader is being deployed in Africa.
The deployment is being done by a non-profit (sound familiar?) known as Worldreader, based in Seattle, Washington, coincidentally a place which reminds me of one William Gates III. Thus far, it has deployed Kindles to about 1000 students in Ghana, Uganda and Kenya. (Thanks to Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica for an excellent report). Worldreader's chief executive David Risher is a former Amazon senior vice-president for retail and marketing.
US government muscle is also involved in this experiment, in the form of the US Agency for International Development.
The normal method of operation for national aid agencies is to find projects in other countries that can be supplied with goods from the aid organisation's own country; this helps to boost profits, (hopefully) provide more taxes to the government, and do it all at the expense of the poor suckers known collectively as the public. It's a win-win situation. Oh, except for the children.
